Download AS and A-level English Literature B The Great Gatsby Aspects

Aspects of tragedy: Text overview - The
Great Gatsby
This resource is an explanation of some of the ways The Great Gatsby can be
considered in relation to the genre of tragedy. This document is intended to
provide a starting point for teachers in their thinking and planning in that it gives
an introductory overview of how the text can be considered through the lens of
tragedy. We haven’t covered every element of this genre. Instead, we hope this
guide will provide a springboard to help you plan, and to get you and your
students thinking about the text in more detail.
Overview
Although The Great Gatsby contains aspects of a number of different genres
(romance, crime, a rags to riches story, a social critique, for example), for AQA
specification B, students will need to read, study and write about the text as a
tragedy. The novel sits comfortably in this genre – specifically a modern 20th
century tragedy and, like Death of a Salesman, its characters are shaped and
dwarfed by the writer’s representation of American consumer culture and the
American Dream.
At the centre of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel is the tragic hero, Gatsby, the son of
“shiftless and unsuccessful farm people”, who utterly reinvents himself as the
fabulously wealthy host of legendary parties in order to win back the love of
Daisy Buchanan. The narrative focuses on his naïve and desperately romantic
dream to “repeat the past” by reigniting their romantic affair, hoping to erase
their five years apart as if those years had never happened. In doing so, he also
reinvents Daisy, idealising her as a vision of perfect womanhood, failing to see
her weakness and fallibility. The Daisy of Gatsby’s dream is as insubstantial as a
fairy’s wing. Five years on she is married to Tom Buchanan and has a history
with him. It is not enough for Gatsby that Daisy says she loves him now; he
wants her to have always loved him in spite of her marriage to Tom. He wants
to control time. Therein lies Gatsby’s tragedy; as Daisy says, he wants too much.
Like Willy Loman, Gatsby has the wrong dreams and they destroy him.
But Gatsby is not a tragic hero just because he is fatally flawed and makes
terrible misjudgments. Such characteristics would simply make him pitiful and a
fool. Fitzgerald uses a sympathetic narrator, Nick Carraway, to elevate Gatsby, to
show him as somehow magnificent: as Nick says “there was something gorgeous
about him”. The colossal vitality of his dream is mesmerising and it is possible to
argue that, like Shakespeare’s Richard II, the world loses something by his
demise.
Gatsby as a tragic hero
But like Richard still, Gatsby is deeply flawed. His wealth is founded on
corruption and so great is his obsession with Daisy he is prepared to do anything
to achieve her, including breaking the law. It seems that he acquires his wealth
through illegal means, buying up “a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in
Chicago”, selling grain alcohol over the counter. According to Tom, that is just
“one of his little stunts”. Gatsby has no guilt about his acquisition of wealth
though; in a sense he sees it as his right. From a young age, we are told,
Gatsby’s huge imagination has led him to dream and desire, embodying the
American belief, ignited by Thomas Jefferson, that he can achieve anything
regardless of his background.
Gatsby’s humble beginnings as a “clam-digger” in a “torn green jersey” present
him as a sort of rags to riches, modern hero. In this respect he is successful, but
he flaunts his wealth to the point of obscenity, evidenced by his extravagant
parties and he suffers from excessive pride (shown in his display of his “colossal
mansion” and the “beautiful shirts” with which he showers Daisy). Gatsby
believes he can buy the world and that money will eventually make his romantic
dreams also come true.
What Gatsby learns in this tragic story though is that money is not enough and
that although the American Dream promised so much, it is a myth. Gatsby is
ultimately bound by his humble class origins: he is Mr Nobody from Nowhere.
Nick believes that Gatsby experienced a revelation at his death realising what a
grotesque thing a rose is, understanding too that his enemy was the elite society
that Daisy herself was a part of and which would always exclude him. In this
sense he is presented as an undeniably modern tragic figure.
However, Gatsby can also be viewed as having features of a classical tragic hero.
As a narrator and self-conscious writer, Nick elevates Gatsby to greatness,
acknowledged by Fitzgerald in the title of the book. Gatsby is set apart from the
other characters because of his “extraordinary gift for hope” and Nick believes
that in the end he is “worth the whole damn bunch put together”. There is great
sadness and pathos at Gatsby’s end, poignantly reflected in the pitiful absence of
attendees at his funeral. Nick’s voice, though, is partly countered by Fitzgerald’s
use of other voices. The voices of the guests at Gatsby’s parties could be likened
to the choric voices of Greek tragedies, providing both witness to and comment
on the dramatic action. The rumours surrounding Gatsby, including suggestions
that “he killed a man”, that he is a “German spy” or that he is “some big
bootlegger”, characterise him as enigmatic and suggest the criminal associations
he has formed during his single-minded quest for Daisy.
Gatsby is also a classical tragic hero in that he is the victim of forces outside
himself – Daisy’s carelessness and Tom’s hard malice. While one might agree
with Daisy that Gatsby asks too much, pathos is still felt at Daisy’s abandonment
of him and at his lonely death. He is punished finally for a crime he does not
commit, but one for which he accepts responsibility because of the woman he
loves. This, along with the language Fitzgerald uses to document his fall,
secures Gatsby’s status as a tragic hero. Gatsby is described lyrically, his smile
has a “quality of eternal reassurance in it” and his yearning for Daisy is
described as a desire to “suck on the pap of life” and to “gulp down the
incomparable milk of wonder”. Stylistically, this poetic prose could be seen as
reminiscent of the verse form traditionally used in classical tragedies; it gives the
novel a resonance and magnitude that is, at times, at odds with the events of
the story itself.
The tragic villain
Daisy’s husband Tom is obviously the antagonist. He is set up as a villain
through the physical descriptions of his “cruel body” and “arrogant eyes” and
through the violence of his actions (his bruising Daisy’s finger and breaking
Myrtle’s nose with his open hand). He has no moral compass and he lacks
compassion and idealism, thereby directly contrasting with Gatsby.
While Tom does not pull the trigger on the gun that kills Gatsby he is presented
as having a significant role in his death. He tells Wilson that the death car that
kills Myrtle was owned by Gatsby thereby fuelling Wilson’s lust for revenge.
Although Tom feels his actions are “entirely justified”, Nick cannot forgive him.
Nick holds Tom and his “careless” actions responsible for the smashing up of the
lives of George, Myrtle and Gatsby.
When Fitzgerald introduces Tom to the narrative he is described as ‘supercilious’,
‘arrogant’, ‘cruel’, ‘aggressive’ and ‘hard’. This list of adjectives focuses on the
power that both his money and his status afford him and when Gatsby’s dream
is “broken up like glass” by Tom’s “hard malice” it could be seen to represent the
ruthlessness of the elite classes towards those whom they consider beneath
them. Daisy’s return to Tom at the end of the novel, her refusal to confess to
her part in Myrtle’s death and her non-attendance at Gatsby’s funeral ultimately
depict her as equally unprincipled, selfish and perhaps as villainous as her
husband. She can also be seen as a Siren with her alluring voice full of money
leading Gatsby, an innocent voyager, to his doom. In classical tragedies the
villains are destroyed, but in this tragedy, Tom and Daisy end where they began:
alive, together and wealthy. Readers are invited to judge them, as Nick does, but
there is no moral dispensation of justice and no intervention from the gods.
A sense of inevitability or fate
The fact that the end of Gatsby’s story is known to the narrator at the start and
acknowledged through his retrospective narrative position gives The Great
Gatsby an obvious sense of inevitability. The frequent use of foreboding and an
elegiac narrative voice, heard when Nick describes “the foul” that preyed on
Gatsby and through his reference to “savage, frightening dreams”, creates the
sense that Gatsby and his dreams are doomed from the start. The eyes of
Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are an interesting symbol in regards to fate. Wilson sees
them as the eyes of God warning that God sees everything. It is possible to argue
that Fitzgerald suggests that God has pre-ordained Gatsby’s end. However, if
the eyes are God’s, then they belong to an unfair God who does nothing to
punish Tom Buchanan, his wife and those with inherited wealth.
Setting
The American setting is central to the tragedy. The 1920s America which
Fitzgerald represents is built on a rigid class structure and is inherently flawed
and unjust, with the extreme excesses of the rich explicitly contrasted with “the
hot struggles of the poor”. This is ironic given that America is founded on
notions of equality and supposedly at a distance from the inflexible stratifications
of European societies. America promises much (the American Dream is Gatsby’s
and perhaps Myrtle’s informing spirit), but the novel suggests that it will always
exclude those who are not born into money. Thus the Dream is fundamentally
flawed. Typical of a modern tragedy, the social hierarchy (in this case the
patriarchal and elite of the 1920s) shapes the fate of individuals and is greater
than the power of their aspirations.
Fitzgerald uses contrasts to foreground the social divisions and social inequalities
on which his plot is based. The descriptions of the Buchanan’s “cheerful redand-white Georgian colonial mansion” with its “gleaming white” windows and
“frosted wedding-cake of a ceiling” stand in stark contrast to the poverty
presented in the Valley of Ashes. The desolation and deprivation of this society
are seen in the description of “the ash-grey men” who are already “crumbling”
and who suffer and struggle. This inequality indicates the lack of social
conscience present in the privileged classes, perhaps shown most clearly though
Tom’s dismissal of George as “so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive”. Even those
with money are not exempt from mockery and contempt if it has not been
inherited. Gatsby’s wealth is viewed as suspicious new money, not equal in
status to the riches of the established elite, who are prepared to exploit him but
never accept him. His mansion is across the bay from Daisy’s home, with its
green light at the end of the dock, and this distance symbolises how separate he
is from her in every sense.
Gatsby, George and Myrtle are all presented as victims of social snobbery in
varying ways. The death of Gatsby at the end of the novel (when according to
Nick he undergoes a moment of anagnorisis and “found ...how raw the sunlight
was upon the scarcely created grass”) acts cathartically but also invites the
reader to consider the responsibility of the empty-hearted society presented in
the narrative and perhaps look for change in what could be the ‘orgastic future’.
Chaos, tragic victims and death
Consistent with classical tragic drama, the fall of the tragic hero has
consequences beyond himself. Although Gatsby is not of high estate like classical
tragic figures, his tragedy engulfs others, not in terms of national chaos, but in a
domestic sense. Both Gatsby and Tom are responsible for challenging marriage
as an institution. Gatsby has no respect for Tom and Daisy’s marriage and
chooses to blank out the child Pammy. Tom, by flaunting his affair with Myrtle, is
directly responsible for the discord in the Wilson’s marriage. The collision of the
love triangles results in the climactic argument in the Plaza hotel and Myrtle’s
fatal accident which follows. At the hotel, Tom, aware that Wilson might be
taking Myrtle away and aware that Daisy says she loves Gatsby, is described as
feeling “hot whips of panic” when “his wife and his mistress, until an hour ago
secure and inviolate, were slipping precipitately from his control”, and Gatsby
loses his previous cool and begins to “talk excitedly” to Daisy when she refuses
to say she never loved Tom. The resulting accident, where Daisy drives home to
“steady” her nerves and kills Myrtle when she “rushed out” at them, is a direct
consequence of the domestic chaos presented in the text.
Myrtle is of course a victim. True, she is cruel to her husband whom she happily
betrays by having an adulterous affair with Tom, but her death is brutal and
tragic. For all her faults (she is vulgar and hollow), Myrtle has a “tremendous
vitality” and she desperately wants to live. When her vitality is contrasted with
the graphic descriptions of her death, where ‘mingled her thick dark blood with
the dust’, a sense of pity is aroused in the reader. Similarly Gatsby’s death is
tragic both in its injustice and in the way it is presented as having little impact
on the surrounding society, causing only “little ripples” and “the shadows of
waves” in the swimming pool. George’s death is described as completing the
“holocaust”, a term with connotations of religious sacrifice, thereby deepening
the sense of loss in what is essentially a domestic tragedy. All three can be seen
as victims of the heartless, self-serving arrogance of the elite class that uses and
despises them.
Interestingly, although marriage is on one level a victim in this novel, at the end
there is a restoration of what appears to be domestic harmony. Fitzgerald
presents Daisy and Tom as being relatively unaffected by the tragedy; they have
“an unmistakable air of natural intimacy” between them when Nick sees them in
a typically domestic scene, eating supper (a plate of cold fried chicken and two
bottles of ale) and holding hands across the kitchen table. In this way it could be
argued that some order is restored in the wake of the tragedy but it is an order
that is gained at a terrible cost and one which few readers will feel is satisfying.